FIJ
After his companies allocated apartments and land that existed only on paper to hundreds of investors, Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi became the Ooni of Ife, making him highly connected culturally and politically and somewhat above the law. As if emboldened by the proverbial saying that ‘a king has dominion over all things’, hundreds of investors were never refunded. Gran Imperio Group’s multi-million-naira Essential Homes scheme is described by many as the biggest fraud seen yet in Nigeria’s real estate history.
In October 2014, Mrs Offiong (not real name) received some documents from Metropole Interproject Limited introducing the sale of a “one unit of three-bedroom corner piece bungalow apartment at South Pointe II Estate” at Ajah, Lagos, for N17,967,000 million. She was instructed to pay 50 percent of the cost if she accepted the offer.
Retiring at the top cadre in the civil service after 30 years, she did not hesitate to invest her gratuity because the supposed estate was in a prime location: the building’s specifications and the estate’s facilities as stated in the contract looked top notch; the delivery date was less than a year away in August 2015.
Shortly after paying the initial deposit of N8,983,500 million to Metropole Interproject Limited and a receipt bearing the name of its parent company, Gran Imperio Group was issued to Mrs Offiong on a scheduled visit to the site, Gran Imperio Group took subscribers to South Pointe One, instead of South Pointe II.
“They told us that South Point II was not ready yet, so they took us to South Pointe One to show us what two would look like when it was ready,” said Mrs Offiong’s son, James (not real name), who went with his mother to the site. “There was a bit of confusion that day. We suspected that something was not right but we calmed down when they told us about another estate that would be completed before South Pointe II.”
In a letter to subscribers in February 2015, Adiukwu Kechi, an official of the company, notified subscribers of the need to pay their next instalment. To get them to commit to completing their payments, although no land was shown to subscribers during the site visit, Kechi added: “We have been magnanimous to move you to a site that is beside South Pointe II and will be completed earlier than South Pointe II too, which is Golden Leaf Estate, and a final allocation will be issued too.”
FINAL DEPOSIT YET NO HOUSE
On the day Mrs Offiong made the final deposit of N8,983,500 million, she received a letter from another staff of Metropole Limited, Nnamdi Ukpabi, notifying her of the allotment of ‘Block F Unit 1’. But on the delivery date of August 2015, Mrs Offiong and hundreds of other subscribers found out that what they had were buildings and land on paper; they had been defrauded by companies headed at the time by Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, a man later crowned the Ooni of Ife in December of the same year.
Many investors, citing fear of backlash from the monarch, declined to go on record, but they accused the company of defrauding them. FIJ managed to track five people who agreed to provide documents and correspondences with the companies’ officials on the condition that their identities were not revealed. Visits to the locations of the supposed estates, revealed that the estate schemes never materialised.
